In Prague, Jiří Kovanda has long been considered an artist’s artist. His actions and works, and his self-understanding as an artist, have had significant influence over a broad range of younger Czech practitioners. Yet his work has rarely been seen in exhibitions, and some critics have not taken him seriously because of his lack of formal art education. Although he is now fifty-three, this is Kovanda’s first Prague gallery show; indeed, it is the first exhibition to survey the great range of his work. Thus he has titled the show “The First Kovanda Retrospective.”

Kovanda began his activity as an